Lucy in the Sy with Diamonds

He puts his best jeans on tonight. His black boots are polished, laced up nice and tight. Frankie's hair is slicked like back in seventy-five; come on baby, let's drive... His fingers caress the cold curves and raise dusty stripes on the sleek black skin of his oldest friend.

"Summertime baby, summertime... Let's get your top down."

"You talking to me or the car daddy-o?"

He winks at her where she would be standing at the passenger door.

"Why not both baby, why not both..." he grins lopsidedly, sucking on a lucky strike and remembering her laughing at the customary quip. The vinyl seat is sticky on his sweaty arms as he slides behind the wheel.

"You kept her all these years? I swear you loved her almost as much as me."

"Almost baby, almost..."

The key slides in and a dragon grumbles waking to an idle then spits fire with a touch of the pedal. Vrooom! He stretches an arm across the back of the bench seat and reverses out into the night. Duggaduggadugga...

He waits on the curb for her to warm up. Watching the oil pressure settle and the temperature rise, he lights his cigarette with the push button lighter and leans his head back looking to the stars. He blows a cloud of grey smoke heavenward smiling and thinking, "Lucy's in the sky with diamonds."

Screeeeeeeeeechirpchirp vrooooom.... A light or two come on but a cloud of rubber smoke and two long black lines are all that's left to insult the tidy suburban boxes. He's headed east. We can follow in a helicopter if you like, watching the faint red glow of his tail lights and the yellow white fan of his headlights threading through the traffic just a little too fast. He swings off the freeway and winds through some back roads down on to the bayside esplanade.

"Low and slow now daddy-o. Let the boys all see your two best rides." She purrs in his ear between sips on a hip flask she found in the glove box. The 289 v8 purrs along with her, humming growls into the night.

As he waits for the lights to change he slips a cool hand inside her blouse and she laughs, "Oh, you're trouble mister! Mother was right about you."

"What your mummy don't know baby, what your mummy don't know..."

"Who you talking to grandad?" The kids in the hatchback beside him yell through their open window. "Nice car pops! Light it up. Come on -- show us what the old girls got!"

Eyes straight down the road, he raises one hand and a single middle finger as the lights change and they whizz off with a chirp of rubber and a sound like a sewing machine enjoying a coronary infarction. Whiiiiiiizzzzz chuff, whiiiiizzzzz chuff, whiiiiizzzzzz... He shakes his head and laughs, "Kids hey baby, kids..."

The hula doll nods from the dashboard but his arm is cold now on the seat back as if she's left him for a while. He puts both hands on the wheel and sets a grimace on his leathery face. He slips a cd in the player. Nick put that in last Christmas when the AM station shut down. He's a good kid that boy. Looks after his old man.

The smooth street soothes his mind as he rolls on past diners and parkland, clubs and trendy places he doesn't even know the purpose of.

"Where are we headed daddy-o? To the levee? Remember all those summer nights?"

"Sure do baby, sure do."

"You'd park down on the corner so my father didn't hear the mustang and I'd sneak out through the broken fence. We'd cruise all night with Peggy and Stu then park down on the rock wall."

"They're all gone baby, all gone now."

"Not in here lover." She puts a small hand on his heart and leans against him as he turns down toward the levee. "Are we partying tonight? Did my daddy bring me candy?"

"Maybe baby, maybe a little devils dirt in the mix..."

She rustles through the glove compartment and produces a little silver snuff box. "You do love your baby girl!" She opens the little box and uses a fingernail to scoop a little white dust to her nose. Sniff! She shakes her head and laughs with her head thrown back.

"Whooeee!" She stands holding the windscreen and with her hair whipping her back screams into the bustle of the traffic, "My pussy tastes like pepsi cola and my titties squirt whipped cream. Tell me the truth now daddy-o, tell me you're living the dream."

His mouth wrinkles in the corners, "True baby, true. You're the good kind of bad, the bad kind of good; the girl girls would be if the good girls could."

That was any Saturday for six good years. They were a fixture in the rollers. Cruising the esplanade and parking down at the bay. Everyone knew Frankie and Lucy. He's still smiling as he lifts the Saturday snuff box to his nose and sniff! He's twenty-six again.

"Hey baby, does your mother know you're wearing that skirt?"

"Oh daddy, she'd die if she knew. She calls it the devil's handkerchief."

"Maybe it is baby, maybe it is; it's making me sin just looking at it.... Hey baby, does your mother know you can dance like that?"

"Oh daddy, she'd die if she knew I shook my coochie coo the way I do, for only you."

They are dancing in the headlights of the mustang with the radio playing loudly. Stu and Peggy have wandered off somewhere privately.

"Hey baby, would your mother mind, if I put one hand on that fair behind?"

"Oh daddy, what my mummy don't know, my mummy don't mind."

This was about as far as it always went. He'd met her when he started working at her father's garage. This was the fourth night this week she had snuck away to meet him. School was out for summer and he had two weeks annual leave from work. Her mother was not his biggest concern. Her father was a brutal man with ties to a local bike club. He'd hospitalised her last boyfriend when he didn't get her home on time.

"Anyway daddy-o, I'm good to go, I'm all eighteen and legal now and you're going way to slow."

"Oh baby, I'm changing gears." He watches her twirl with his hand on her bare waist above the tiny red skirt.

"Good." She says and suddenly grabs his t-shirt pulling his face to hers in a hungry kiss that's too much tongue and noise. His hands slide nervously up her back to hold her neck and down her spine to cup her little round bum cheek where it almost hides under the skirt. She reaches around to grab the hand on her arse and pulls it around in front of her to the warm v between her legs.

"Oh baby..."

"Oh daddy..."

She stumbles backwards until the mustang nudges her bum and lies back on the black bonnet, pushing the waist of her underpants down and lifting her bum to help him remove them. His own pants drop with the speed only a horny man can achieve and he rubs his dick along her ginger curls, parting them and finding her slick. She arches her back and thrusts at him and he thrusts forward into her. They meet and freeze for a moment both having been so intent on manifesting this exact union of two small parts of themselves that they've forgotten the people attached to them.

She reaches for his neck and pulls him down on her. He mimics this and holds her neck, kissing her in tender nips at lips and face. She moves beneath him and grinds on his cock and thrusts her clit at his pubic bone. He's forgotten to thrust in his eagerness to enter her and quickly straightens up and awkwardly pumps into her as she lays on the bonnet of his most treasured possession. In moments he's done and pulls out to spurt on her stomach. "Oh baby..."

"Oh daddy-ohhh..." She growls and pulls him back on top of her feeling his softening cock slide wet across her tummy in sticky mess and reaching down she wipes some on her finger and tastes it.

"I'm on the new pill now daddy-o, no need to make a mess."

"Okay baby, sorry." He wipes her tummy with his t-shirt and lifts himself off her.

"I have to pee, no peeking." She goes around the other side of the car and pees in the dirt. She stings a little inside. It didn't hurt but it feels different down there now. A lot of fuss about nothing in particular really, although it was really starting to feel quite nice near the end, a bit like when she masturbates.

"You want a smoke baby?"

"Yeah thanks." She takes the cigarette and he lights it for her. He's zipped up his jeans again and combed his hair.

"So baby, that was cool."

"Cool?" She laughs at the awkward sentiment, "That's just the beginning daddy o'mine. There's all sorts of things your dirty baby girl can do for only you."

"Oh baby, I'm a one bone one dog kind of man."

"We could do it doggy next. Would you like that daddy?" She licks his face and pants.

"Oh you are a dirty girl."

"Who's a dirty girl?" Stu and Peggy walk out of the night.

"Hey Stu."

"Hey Frankie."

"Hey what's that on your shirt?" asks Peggy pointing at a smear of pink stain on the white shirt below his navel.

"What?" He looks down and comprehension spreads slowly across his face then he scrabbles frantically for words. "Ah... Strawberry juice. I got some strawberry on me."

"Oh, really?" Peggy nods not buying it at all. "Strawberries?"

"So, we could really use a ride back to town man. Peggy has to be home by ten or her Dad goes postal."

"No trouble man, Lucy has to be home soon too."

They vault into the back seat of the mustang. Peggy lands on Stuarts lap and calls to Lucy, "Coming Strawbs?"

Horror washes Lucy's face so white the freckles almost vanish and her cheeks blush to match her fiery hair.

He hadn't known it was her first time. It certainly wasn't their last. She took to it like riding a bicycle and kept at it like it cycling was her favourite sport. It wasn't long before the odds failed and little Enid was on her way whether they liked the idea or not.

He flicks his cigarette butt onto the sandy wheel tracks and grinds it out with his steel capped boots. Sweat trickles down the centre of his back. It's balmy out here this evening. Lights play on the bay from the esplanade and the boats at anchor. The ocean gently washes along the rock levee wall and he can see their younger selves dancing for a moment in the sea mist that gathers in the headlights glow.

"Mr Molloy, I got to talk to you."

He's stayed back after work. It's been icy in the garage for a week and he thinks Mr Molloy might already know what it is his apprentice wants to talk to him about. Michael "Bully" Molloy, all five foot eight and two hundred pounds of mostly shoulders wipes a spanner on a grease rag and wanders closer to where Frankie leans on his mustang.

"This ought to be grand." 'Bully' usually conserves words as if he is saving them for a special occasion. Grunts and groans, nods and gestures are his usual banter. Frankie is surprised to find he still has quite an Irish lilt to his speech when you really listen to him.

"Aye, for your sake, I hope its gilt lad."

"It's about Lucy, boss. I..."

"Yes... you?" A smile like the edge of a razor blade twists across the older man's mouth.

"I, well, we..." He shuffles nervously and lights a cigarette, buying time, trying to find words.

"It seems you've not been blessed with the gift of the gab. You've never kissed the blarney stone." Watching a curious mix of fear and courage in the young man's eyes he continues, "That's good, I like plain speech. Perhaps I'll just talk for a moment while you gather what wits you have."

"See, my family are the world to me. My most precious things... A bit like your 64 half coupe over here." He runs a hand down the flank of the mustang. "My dear girl Ellen and I had a hard start to things, you know. Things are very different back home. Her father was in the guards and my folk were catholic. There were people we knew that would kill us just for talking, let alone some of the other things we were doing to each other. I found out she was going to have our little Lucy and I swore an oath to god to bring them here and start a new life away from the troubles. I did many things to make bankroll on that oath that I'll never talk about... My question for you is what are you prepared to do for my little Lucy."

"Oh Mr Molloy, I'd do whatever it takes, you know. I got some savings, I can make a way. I'll do the right thing by her."

"Oh I know you'll do the right thing. I'll make sure of it once I've decided what the right thing is."

The red haired man makes his way to a bench and picks up a five pound hammer. "See the thing is she's told us all of what you probably want to talk to me about this evening. She told us early in the week and I've been thinking a lot on it. You could say it's been kind of scratching..." he runs the steel handle of the hammer along the side of the Mustang dragging a metal deep score in the paint, "at my mind the whole time."

"Oh man, my car. Hey!" Frankie grabs at the hammer and his bosses hand but the older man is quick. He pushes him away with brutal strength, like a bull switches a fly with his tail.

"I've had such a headache thinking on it. Constant... pounding!" He swings the hammer down on the bonnet denting it deeply.

"I mean we fought hard my Ellen and I to make a life here for little Lucy. We knew she would grow up. We knew this day would come. What we don't know is if she has found someone who would fight for her like we did. And lad... I don't see you fighting real hard to protect the most precious thing you own. So what should I think?" He tosses the hammer on the bonnet leaves it there.

Frankie is angry, his face red and his fists clenched, he walks toward his boss and with measured fury takes the hammer from where it sits on the bonnet and returns it the workbench. As he turns his back on 'Bully' Molloy he starts talking quietly, like he's thinking out loud. "She's a whole lot of trouble in an itty bitty skirt, dancing down in the devils dirt... But she's the kinda trouble I like. Her old man is a tough guy, connected, but she's worth it. It would be smarter just to keep on driving, there are plenty of pretty girls who'd love to ride but I can't. My head says," he runs a hand down the deep scratch and makes a face at the damage, "don't shit where you eat Frankie! But what do I listen... My heart's already decided what it wants and I never known how to go against that. Never felt like that about a girl. Sure, I had crushes but this is different. I'd risk her old man sacking me. I'd risk taking a beating. I'd risk it all just to see her smile and hear her sassy mouth call me 'daddy-o' one time more."

He stands in front of Lucy's father. Frankie is taller by six inches but lean with youth and looks down into the old man's steel blue eyes. "I don't want to fight you. I'm no fighter. I can handle myself pretty well when I have to and I'm sure you can too but that's not the point. This here," he runs his hand along the mustang, "Is metal and paint. If someone else had touched my car, oh man... but you're the father of the woman I love and this can be fixed..."

He's silent for a moment and then, planting both feet firmly he explodes pushing Mr Molloy violently in the chest and throwing him back across the garage where he lands on the floor and scrabbles glowering as he regains his feet.

"But you, or any other cunt fucks with Lucy and what she wants... Anyone stand between us and the devil can pick the bones... Fuck with me all you like, but leave my baby alone." He shouts, standing over the scariest man he knows.

A smile spreads across the Irishman's face, "That's all you had to say now lad, don't know why you had to go make such a fucken mess of the joint. Fucken Italians and their drama, sheesh... Let's have a beer and look at the damage then hey?"

He wanders off to a fridge in the corner returning with two tall bottles of beer, "say, I have a bit of a job you might be interested in come Friday night. You kids will need some money with the baby coming..."

By the end of the week, the Mustang had a fresh coat of satin black and hand painted pin stripes. Lucy and Frank had a two room apartment a block from her parents and the rest as they say is history. Enid was born that year and Nick eighteen months later. Every Saturday the kids stayed at Lucy's parents and they cruised. Mr Molloy's connections brought a lot of 'little jobs' Frankie's way and there was always money for gas, grog and a little snort on Saturdays. Daddy-o and his baby danced in the devils dirt for a while longer.

He drains the last of the hip flask and lies back in the seat with his head on the sill and his feet on the passenger seat. McCartney and co sing 'Lucy in the sky with diamonds' from the speakers and he remembers;

"Watching you just now baby, bright eyes above me and the stars all behind you, it's like you're floating in the sky with diamonds..."

She snuggles down on his chest, "Daddy you send me floating up there."

They lie that way with his dick still inside her for a while and the words of a song put roots through their souls. This is what 'Lucy in the sky with diamonds' means for them. This space they occupy when they are together and all the world vanishes. Just their skin, their smell, their breath and her shining eyes above him with the stars haloed around her fiery curls.

He can feel her now heavy on his chest, breathing into his shoulder in ragged pants as she settles. That was heaven. That was the place where she would be now; the place he'd go when he left this world. Back to that moment.

His phone rings. He mumbles, "Cunt of an idea, a phone that follows you when you leave the house..."

"Hey boy."

"Hey Dad. Where you at?"

"Took the car out lad."

"Down the levee again?"

"Hmmm."

"You got company old man or are you drinking alone?"

"Just me and your mother's ghost, dancing and talking shit."

"You sad old fuck. Bring that beautiful black bitch around here. I got a little red haired girl and her dad, would love to cruise with grandad."

"Just might do that mate."

"Listen, Dad... I worry sometimes. You need some company, some people your age to hang with."

"My age? We've done this jig before buddy. I'm only sixty-seven, I'm not going in some old fucks parking garage to rust... Just you... worry about your own little gang buddy."

"Love ya Dad."

"Love you too dick head, now go make more grand kids or something. Let me wallow. I'll see you Monday at work hey?"

"Ok then Dad."

He throws the phone in back seat. It lands in the puddle of blood. Stu slumps forward in the seat with blood in the corners of his mouth and ears and a blackened hole in the centre of his forehead that geysers brains and blood.

Instinctively he reaches for the glove compartment and takes out the magnum. He's holding it in his right hand as he stands beside the mustang looking into the empty back seat.

Lighting a cigarette he moves around to the passenger side and half sits, half leans on the doorsill. His eyes leak. "Stuey... What the fuck mate? Why?" he asks the still summer air. But there is no why. There never was. It made no sense then, it makes no sense now.

"Turn that up daddy. That's my jive."

He turns up the radio and watches the girls dance. Lucy holds Peggy's hand as she twirls under her arm and they laugh while they dance.

"So Strawbs have you guys set a date?"

"No, not yet Peggy. Frankie wants to finish paying for the garage first then we'll spend on a wedding."

"What about you guys?"

"I don't know. Stu's so... I don't know." The mood falls and Peggy goes back to the car for another little dose of the devils dirt.

"You seen him?" she asks Frankie.

He shrugs and gestures to some other cars parked further down the levee. "He's gonna find trouble with that crowd and their cheap shitty uppers, he's angry all the time."

"I know, I know, he just won't listen." There's a scream from far away, a woman, high pitched and never ending. Then more yelling and someone running. Stu explodes into the streetlamp and dives into the back of the mustang.

"Quick we gotta roll. Get the fuck out of here! Come on! Come on!" He's frantically gesturing to Peggy and Lucy, "Come on you fucken dumb sluts. Get in. Frankie for fucks sake hurry-" BLAM!!!